2018 Heirloom Easter Dress

Easter is a special time of year. Spring flowers are blooming and the weather is getting warmer. Here in the deep south, mothers start planning Easter outfits for their children in January. The design is sketched then laces and fabrics are selected. Planning Easter outfits usually take days not just hours. Magazines and Pinterest are looked at for ideas and details. After a style is decided on then you find a pattern for the style of the dress for girls and shirt/pants pattern for boys. In this article we will talk about a girl's dress. Child measurements are taken to ensure a good fit for the garment. It is also a good idea to measure a garment that fits the child well. After a style and pattern are selected, then mothers need to look at fabrics and laces.

After the style and design of the dress are decided, the lace and type of fabric are selected. French Valiennces lace is available in basically three colors: white, ivory, and ecru. For this dress, the mother selected white fabric and ecru lace. I used white Imperial Batiste by Spechler Vogel for the dress laces from Capitol Imports. The laces came in white and I dyed them with coffee, water, and set the dye with vinegar. There is a tutorial on how I dyed the lace HERE.

Let's talk about fabrics used on heirloom quality garments. Purists will say only 100% cotton or 100% linen fabrics should be used. When "french sewing" was done entirely by hand (more on that in a following paragraph), 100% cotton or linen fabrics needed to be used in order to roll and whip the fabric by hand. Today most French Sewing techniques are done on a sewing machine and you can achieve a similar look using a polyester/cotton blend of fabric. I have garments I made 25 years ago with a quality polyester/cotton batiste and they look just as nice as they did when they were originally made. I will talk more about storing heirloom garments in another post. 100% cotton Swiss Batiste and Linen are still my favorite fabrics to work with when making heirloom garments.

After all the decisions have been made, construction begins. When you first look at a dress this complicated, you might ask, "Where do I start?". Construction of the dress is sewn in steps. I like to make the fancy bands first. This dress has bands of lace insertion and bands of pin tucks. After decided the width of the dress, I carefully measured the lace needed for the bands and cut them. Width of the shirt of the dress is determined by size of the child.

The lace bands are sewn together using a method called Machine French Sewing. Hand French Sewing is done by hand with a needle and thread. Laces were pinned to a piece and sewn together with tiny delicate whipped stitches. Most outfits today and sewn using a sewing machine but the stitches are designed to mimic hand sewing. If you have an old garment sewn entirely by hand, you have a true treasure. In Machine French Sewing, you use a tiny narrow zigzag stitch to sew the lace pieces together. Care is taken not to stretch the lace.

For this dress, I stitched the selections in the following order:
Lace bands
Tuck bands
Skirt Ruffle
Sleeves
Front and back yoke

After all the sections are made, I lay them out on my grid pad and measure to see how deep to cut the fabric skirt piece. I wish I had thought to take a picture of the layout. As a general rule, you want the fabric piece to be at no less than 1/3 of the skirt length. Then the sections are now stitched together. The front and back yokes were made larger than needed and a "grow" tucked was added. The "grow" tuck was stitched with hand stitching so it can be easily taken out the next year and the child can wear the dress another year. Heirloom style dresses are very expensive to made and mother's want to get as much wear as possible. The lace around the yokes were gathered and stitched on my hand. Ribbon was run through the lace beading and tacked down by hand.

A matching slip was made and used under the dress.

Here are close-up pictures of the front and back of the dress:

The back of the dress is closed with Baby Bar Pins. I call them Beauty Pins and you can find them here on my website.

Skirt Detail

Skirt and Band Detail

Sleeve Detail

Dress Front

These beautiful garments are not only used for special occasions like Easter and weddings but are also worn for portraits. 

Here is a picture of the gorgeous little girl wearing the dress. She is adorable and loved her "fancy dress".

2018 Christening Gown Ensemble

Creating keepsake heirloom Christening Ensembles are my favorite thing to make in heirloom sewing. It takes hours just to plan the style of the gown and bonnet, what laces to use, and to “play” with the laces to find just the right combination for the fancy bands.

My customer last summer wanted a very elaborate gown made with Nelona Swiss Batiste and French laces. She gave me a budget but let me make all the decisions about the gown. She was a dream customer! Her only request was a puffing strip in the fancy band. After looking through magazines and books by Sarah Howard Stone, I decided on a high yoke gown with a fancy band and ruffle. I put rows and rows of laces together to get the perfect combination. All the laces are beautiful but some look better together than others. When I was happy with the selections, I started measuring the depth of the bands to figure out the depth needed for the fabric at the top of the skirt and for the ruffle. I laid the pieces out on a grid mat to see the measurements

The picture above shows the lace band, tucked bands, puffing strip, and bottom ruffle laid out but not sewn together. It is on my grid table so I can check the height of this portion of the skirt bottom. As a rule, the embellished portion of the skirt should not exceed two-thirds of the skirt length measurement.

When working on an heirloom project, I do it in sections. Usually, I work on the fancy part of the skirt first, then the front and back bodice, and lastly, the sleeves. I get each section completed before I start assembling the gown. I like to work on the dress in this order: fancy bands, skirt, ruffle, front and back bodices, and sleeves.

The strips of lace were joined with tiny narrow zigzag stitches. I kept adding lace strips until I had the band the way I wanted it to look.

Here are the details of the dress:

Pattern: Sarah Howard Stone Christening Gown Pattern

Laces: French Valenciennes Lace, color light ecru, and white entredeux

Ribbon: Ecru Double Face Satin

Fabric: White Nelona Swiss Batiste

The bands in the skirt, ruffle, the front and back yokes, and sleeves are all joined together with endredeux.

The front yoke features hand embroidery embellishment.

White fabric is the hardest to photograph and I struggle with lighting and getting great pictures! I took pictures outside and inside.

The picture below was taken inside with light coming in behind the dress. I hung the dress in front of a large window.

This is a picture with a close-up of the bodice showing the hand embroidery.

The back of the gown features a placket and my customer will use two beauty pins to close the gown. Beauty pins are often passed down with the gown to use for generations.

Beauty bar pins can be purchased here: https://www.thepolkadotstore.com/baby-jewelry 

Gold and sterling silver pins are available.

The skirt band is an elaborate combination of four lace bands and two tuck bands on either side of a wide puffing strip.

The fabric ruffle has a center row of lace insertion and lace edging is attached to the bottom of the ruffle. The fabric in the picture is white but the lighting makes it look ecru.

 Here you can see all the skirt details.

A matching slip and bonnet completed the Christening Ensemble. The slip has a beautiful cross embroidered on the front center bottom. A monogram with Christening date will be added to the slip after the Christening. Unfortunately, I forgot to back a picture of the slip.

Christening gowns are my favorite thing to make. Creating something this beautiful is very fulfilling. I can’t wait to start on my next Christening gown project!

Note: All supplies can be purchased from Granny's Attic. Contact info: grannysheirlooms@gmail.com 

Custom Christening Ensembles are made on request.

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